AUERBACH’S ESSAY

The aim: compare two writing styles – Homeric style and biblical
Why does he choose those 2 particular texts he’s looking at – the two types of ancient works; basic types – secular
and biblical one; he’s looking at two different texts from antiquity that crawl out from two different traditions.
Looking at two types from the antiquity as this is the opening of more general study of the representation of reality
in western literature (he starts with earlier texts in literature); he later goes on to analyse other texts, period by
period. Two significant texts from the beginning of the history in western literature.

What traditions? - The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems; Greco-Roman tradition; ancient
Greek culture. Bible Jewish Christian (characteristic of Jewish culture). TWO roots of western culture and western
observation.

First observation: background and foreground. You cannot find more different writing styles – first observation.
Writing style of those texts cannot be more different. This strikes him as the most obvious.

- Biblical text – Old Testament, a fragment of genesis

- Homer – part of the Odyssey

Method of analysis – selective fragments chosen. Although he considers those fragments in context, referring to
other aspects of the texts. He chooses 2 particular fragments to focus on. Close-reading particular subjects. This is
what philologists do.

Reality represented by two fundamental traditions.

- Gods are more human like in Odyssey. In biblical text God is more mysterious. People can hear the voice of
God, from a dark place. God assumes a form of voice. Voice coming from space. Bodyless voice – you know it
must be God by how the voice comes to you or what he was saying.
- In Homeric text we know the reason why Gods come. We know their internal thoughts. The motivation for
this God’s command in the Bible is not described, we don’t know reason for this.
- REPRESENTATION BETWEEN TIME AND SPACE – in Bible we don’t know the exact space and the only info
about time is that it lasts 3 days. Biblical text is very economical. Ethical significance – Abraham is committed
to fulfil the command (he doesn’t delay it, feels obliged. His fidelity to God) – as in the morning it happens it
was mentioned – it is to say something about Abrahams commitment to God commands.
- Details – here in biblical text not full of details. The importance of texts. Details acquiring deeper meaning
and deeper function. It is not just straightforward details. In realist novels full of details they are not as
important. IF there are so few details given to us, we think that if we are given those details, they must be
significant.

REALITY - Homer is more realistic as it presents reality as it is. Homeric poems conceal nothing. We have everything
in front of our eyes. We don’t have to guess what characters mean.
“The oft-repeated reproach that Homer is a liar takes nothing from his effectiveness, he does not need to base his
story on historical reality, his reality is powerful enough in itself; it ensnares us, weaving its web around us, and that
suffices him. And this “real” world into which we are lured, exists for itself, contains nothing but itself; the Homeric
poems conceal nothing, they contain no teaching and no secret second meaning. Homer can be analysed, as we have
essayed to do here, but he cannot be interpreted”
And in the bible there are second meanings and things that need to be interpreted.

What reality is like for homer – everything is externalised, put, visible.

“The Homeric poems, then, though their intellectual, linguistic, and above all syntactical culture appears to be so
much more highly developed, are yet comparatively simple in their picture of human beings; and no less so in their
relation to the real life which they describe in general. Delight in physical existence is everything to them, and their
highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. Between battles and passions, adventures and perils, they
show us hunts, banquets, palaces and shepherds’ cots, athletic contests and washing days—in order that we may see
the heroes in their ordinary life, and seeing them so, may take pleasure in their manner of enjoying their savoury
present, a present which sends strong roots down into social usages, landscape, and daily life. And thus they bewitch
us and ingratiate themselves to us until we live with them in the reality of their lives; so long as we are reading or
hearing the poems, it does not matter whether we know that all this is only legend, “make-believe.” The oft-
repeated reproach that Homer is a liar takes nothing from his effectiveness, he does not need to base his story on
historical reality, his reality is powerful enough in itself; it ensnares us, weaving its web around us, and that suffices
him”

Portray ordinary life to be perceptible to other people and to the reader. Ordinary life. People from Greco-Roman
(Delight in physical existence is everything to them, and their highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to
us.) they just view everyday life that they find extraordinary. Enjoyable things. They took delight in it. The sense of
life, to relish. Physical existence. “Enjoying their savoury present” – savour the present – you enjoy everyday life.
Readers can feel they are in the story. Daily activities, physical existence we are to co-experience with them. Pleasing
your senses. Description of various aspects of existence that please your senses. This is everything to them. Homer
wants to make it perceptible to us too. The physical existence that doesn’t go beyond your sensual pleasure. For
Homer and for this culture there is nothing else. Therefore you multiply the details and you can imagine due to
details – how the dishes taste etc. It is easier for us to imagine it and experience e.g. the feast together.

“It is all very different in the Biblical stories. Their aim is not to bewitch the senses, and if nevertheless they produce
lively sensory effects, it is only because the moral, religious, and psychological phenomena which are their sole
concern are made concrete in the sensible matter of life. But their religious intent involves an absolute claim to
historical truth”. – Being truthful to history. The physical material sensual existence, and Biblical texts about the
spiritual, moral, religious.

Biblical texts in being so economical and sparse in details try to point beyond this physical existence.
The major function of the Biblical text is to convey moral lesson. That may be applicable to people living in different
epochs. Religious and ethical lesson.

UNIVERSALITY - When text full of details of epoch that is not your own. Then we cannot relate to this. We cannot
identify with them. It has an alienating effect. Bible presents the universal, timeless truth. It communicates timeless
truth about human experience. Then the fewer the details, the more universal the text becomes. Because all of those
details are only isolating. The more details you get, the more different the character is from the potential reader.
Tyrannical truth – it is universal, applicable to the universal human experience. Time passes by, but the Bible is still to
have power over human experience; to make the text more metaphorical but also point to spiritual reality (that
matters). Spiritual reality that is universal. In order to achieve it, you strip your text out of those details.

Western literature grows out of the two very different traditions. Two ways of perceiving reality.